A minister speaks to the EPA on the natural order

I am a Lutheran minister, and I teach on the subject of religion and the environment for a Lutheran college. I am also a member of the board of Colorado Interfaith Power and Light.

Colorado is one of 40 IPL state affiliates working with communities of faith to lessen the impacts of climate change through education, through taking action to reduce their own carbon footprints and through advocacy for more environmentally responsible policies at every level of government.

We do this out of our conviction that we human beings have a divine calling and responsibility as caretakers of the creation — the beautiful, intricate, interdependent web of life and natural resources upon which all life, including our own, depends. It is a sacred calling to care for a sacred gift.

All major religious traditions share this belief in our calling to be stewards of creation, to see ourselves not as the masters and commanders of the earth, but as part of a community of creatures who live an interdependent existence.

We are not outside or above the natural order, we are part of it, and everything we do affects that natural order.

We cannot pretend that our activity on the earth has no impacts and no consequences. Our scriptures attest that the well-being of the creation is dependent on treating it and each other with reverence and respect. In turn, our own well-being as a human community is dependent on the well-being of the ecosphere.

As people of faith, we believe that God speaks to us through the creation, and that scientific inquiry is one of the tools available to us in order to discern what creation is saying.

Concerns about climate change and intensive scientific research into its causes and potential impacts have been ongoing for several decades, and we are now experiencing many of the impacts that scientists began alerting us to back then. Our climate is changing rapidly. We know that a major driver of that change is the emission of carbon dioxide, and we know that the largest single source of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions is electrical power plants, mostly powered by coal.

There is no getting around the facts: carbon dioxide heats up in the presence of infrared radiation, and we are significantly and rapidly increasing the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In addition, atmospheric CO2 increases the acidity of the oceans, threatening the chemical balance which is so key to the oceans’ ecosystems.

On behalf of the world’s poor and vulnerable, who are most susceptible to harm from the impacts of climate change, and to whom we also have a sacred duty to care for and protect, and on behalf of future generations of humans and all species, I urge you to … bring our emissions of greenhouses gases under control in order to help minimize the impacts of climate change.

As Chief Seattle is reported to have said when the United States government proposed to purchase some of the last remaining Indian lands: “This we know: all things are connected. The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. We did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”

This is an eloquent expression of the thesis and a welcome example of the confluence of science and faith. The anti-science crowd that “denies” climate change and our role in it has done its best to disrupt the discussion of practical options for action on this issue. We’ll need “coalitions of the willing” to take on the difficult decisions ahead and, perversely, it now requires courage to raise the issue of human-induced climate change. Thus I applaud Nelson Bock for speaking out.

Who is getting into who’s act? Poor old Chief Seattle, getting dragged into the middle of a bunch of big-government environmentalists. Old school, rabid ideologue 1970’s style enviros, at that. What would poor old Chief Seattle think? He was a Catholic who had some problems with the U.S. government. What would he think of a big-government Protestant minister using words he spoke, but translated by 4 generations of white men with different agendas to fleece people of more money?

I wonder if the big-government Protestant minister ever ran across the qoute c. 1835 of Alexis de Tocqueville. It was something to the effect; “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

Where is your moral compass pointing? What are your social values? Hark will explore faith, morals, ethics and character at the intersection of religion ethics, culture, politics, media, science, education, economics and philosophy. At times this blog will alert readers to breaking news and trends. At times it will attempt to look more deeply into intriguing subjects. Hark means to listen attentively, and we will, as readers talk back to the news.